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Sophocles

ancient Greek tragedian

It is no weakness for the wisest man to learn when he is wrong.

Sophocles (Greek: Σοφοκλῆς; 496 BC – 406 BC) was a Greek playwright, dramatist, priest, and politician of Classical Athens. He was also a general for the Athenian Empire in the Peloponnesian Wars, and during his service he led the battle against the Peloponnesian Island of Samos.

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When ice appears out of doors, and boys seize it up while it is solid, at first they experience new pleasures. But in the end their pride will not agree to let it go, but their acquisition is not good for them if it stays in their hands. In the same way an identical desire drives lovers to act and not to act.

Achilles' Loves, only surviving fragment, often quoted as "Love is like ice in the hands of children".

A lie never lives to be old.

Acrisius, fragment 59.

No man loves life like him that's growing old.

Acrisius, fragment 64.

A short saying often contains much wisdom.

Aletes, fragment 99.

Truly, to tell lies is not honorable;
But when the truth entails tremendous ruin,
To speak dishonorably is pardonable.

Creusa, fragment 323.

Do nothing secretly; for Time sees and hears all things, and discloses all.

How dreadful knowledge of the truth can be
When there's no help in truth!

Variant: Wisdom is a curse when wisdom does nothing for the man who has it.

Line 316.

I will never reveal my dreadful secrets, or rather, yours.

Variant: I will not wound myself nor thee. Why seek
To trap and question me? I will not speak.

Variant: Nay, I see that thou, on thy part, openest not thy lips in season: therefore I speak not, that neither may I have thy mishap.

Teiresias (Line 332?).

The tyrant is a child of Pride
Who drinks from his sickening cup
Recklessness and vanity,
Until from his high crest headlong
He plummets to the dust of hope.

Line 872.

Fear? What has a man to do with fear? Chance rules our lives, and the future is all unknown. Best live as we may, from day to day.

Variant: Nay, what should mortal fear, for whom the decrees of fortune are supreme and who hath clear foresight of nothing? 'Tis best to live at random, as one may.

Jocasta (Line 977?).

I am the child of Fortune, the giver of good, and I shall not be shamed. She is my mother; my sisters are the Seasons; my rising and my falling match with theirs. Born thus, I ask to be no other man than that I am.

Variant: I am Fortune's child,
Not man's; her mother face hath ever smiled
Above me, and my brethren of the sky,
The changing Moons, have changed me low and high.
There is my lineage true, which none shall wrest
From me; who then am I to fear this quest?

Oedipus (Line 1079?).

The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves.

Line 1184, Second Messenger; one commonly quoted translation is, "The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities".

Time eases all things.

Line 1515.

Let every man in mankind's frailty
Consider his last day; and let none
Presume on his good fortune until he find
Life, at his death, a memory without pain.

Variant: Look upon him, O my Thebans, on your king, the child of fame!
This mighty man, this Œdipus the lore far-famed could guess,
And envy from each Theban won, so great his lordliness—
Lo to what a surge of sorrow and confusion hath he come!
Let us call no mortal happy till our eyes have seen the doom
And the death-day come upon him—till, unharassed by mischance,
He pass the bound of mortal life, the goal of ordinance.
[Tr. E. D. A. Morshead (1885)]

Variant: People of Thebes, my countrymen, look on Oedipus.
He solved the famous riddle, with his briliance,
he rose to power, a man beyond all power.
Who could behold his greatness without envy?
Now what a black sea of terror has overwhelmed him.
Now as we keep our watch and wait the final day,
count no man happy till he dies, free of pain at last.
[quoted by Thomas Cahill in Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea]

Our ship of fate, which recent storms have threatened to destroy, has come safely to harbor at last.

Line 163

I have nothing but contempt for the kind of governor who is afraid, for whatever reason, to follow the course that he knows is best for the State; and as for the man who sets private friendship above the public welfare — I have no use for him, either.

Nothing so evil as money ever grew to be current among men. This lays cities low, this drives men from their homes, this trains and warps honest souls till they set themselves to works of shame; this still teaches folk to practise villainies, and to know every godless deed. But all the men who wrought this thing for hire have made it sure that, soon or late, they shall pay the price.

Lines 295-303

Henceforth ye may thieve with better knowledge whence lucre should be won, and learn that it is not well to love gain from every source. For thou wilt find that ill-gotten pelf brings more men to ruin than to weal.

The ideal condition
Would be, I admit, that men should be right by instinct;
But since we are all likely to go astray,
The reasonable thing is to learn from those who can teach.

Line 720

Love, unconquerable,
Waster of rich men, keeper
Of warm lights and all-night vigil
In the soft face of a girl:
Sea-wanderer, forest-visitor!
Even the pure immortals cannot escape you,
And mortal man, in his one day's dusk,
Trembles before your glory.

Be his
My special thanks, whose even-balanced soul
From first youth tested up to extreme old age
Business could not make dull, nor passion wild;Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole;The mellow glory of the Attic stage,
Singer of sweet Colonus, and its child.